Administrative capital (2011 est.): Pretoria, 1.501 million; Legislative capital and largest city: Cape
Town, 3.562 million. Judicial
capital: Bloemfontein, 468,000. No decision has been made to
relocate the seat of government. South Africa is demarcated into
nine provinces, consisting of the Gauteng, Northern Province,
Mpumalanga, North West, KwaZulu/Natal, Eastern Cape, Western Cape,
Northern Cape, and Free State. Each province has its own capital.

Geography

South Africa, on the continent's southern tip, is bordered by the
Atlantic Ocean on the west and by the Indian Ocean on the south and east.
Its neighbors are Namibia in the northwest, Zimbabwe and Botswana in the
north, and Mozambique and Swaziland in the northeast. The kingdom of
Lesotho forms an enclave within the southeast part of South Africa, which
occupies an area nearly three times that of California.

The southernmost point of Africa is Cape Agulhas, located in the
Western Cape Province about 100 mi (161 km) southeast of the Cape of Good
Hope.

Government

Republic.

History

The San people were the first settlers; the Khoikhoi and Bantu-speaking
tribes followed. The Dutch East India Company landed the first European
settlers on the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, launching a colony that by the
end of the 18th century numbered only about 15,000. Known as Boers or
Afrikaners, and speaking a Dutch dialect known as Afrikaans, the settlers
as early as 1795 tried to establish an independent republic.

After occupying the Cape Colony in that year, Britain took permanent
possession in 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, bringing in 5,000
settlers. Anglicization of government and the freeing of slaves in 1833
drove about 12,000 Afrikaners to make the “great trek” north
and east into African tribal territory, where they established the
republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

The discovery of diamonds in 1867 and gold nine years later brought an
influx of “outlanders” into the republics and spurred Cape
Colony prime minister Cecil Rhodes to plot annexation. Rhodes's scheme of
sparking an “outlander” rebellion, to which an armed party
under Leander Starr Jameson would ride to the rescue, misfired in 1895,
forcing Rhodes to resign. What British expansionists called the
“inevitable” war with the Boers broke out on Oct. 11, 1899.
The defeat of the Boers in 1902 led in 1910 to the Union of South Africa,
composed of four provinces, the two former republics, and the old Cape and
Natal colonies. Louis Botha, a Boer, became the first prime minister.
Organized political activity among Africans started with the establishment
of the African National Congress in 1912.